Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by The Secular One on September 14, 2009 at 1:23pm

Darts are mutations. They are manufactured by accidents in replication or damage from the environment. Being thrown is analogous to being entered into the population through reproduction. The dart board is survival. The bullseye is a beneficial mutation.

Please, go read yourself something other than quack pseudoscience.

Permalink Reply by Heidi Guedel on September 14, 2009 at 12:05pm

I've just now noticed your reply, JstN Earthling, back on page 3:

"...Life is a form of energy IMO.Because of the way it seems to be able to manipulate form and purpose of plants and animals in order to help "life" thrive in the many ways possible for it to survive that we now know as viable. I saw an intelligence sort of because "life" seems to "desire" to "thrive" and therefore must have planned the changes it's made.
So as I thought about life, the way it manipulates material in order to "live" I see intelligence and it definitely designs forms of itself."

RIGHT (IMHO). This nicely paraphrases my own thoughts, JstN. I'm so glad I was moved to check back through the thread this AM. That's just a small example of the "leadings" I sometimes receive.

This morning I was pondering the significant vast extinctions which apparently took place on this planet - Permian and Cambrian - and how life burgeoned again. Why? Why didn't it all just perish? Why would "life" change and adapt and flourish again completely by "accident"? Sure... I impute motive, intention and purpose... and I realize that such "conscious" elements have not been proven... but neither have accident and coincidence... which seem much more far-fetched than what I (and you) tend to believe.

Permalink Reply by The Secular One on September 14, 2009 at 1:14pm

Arguments from ignorance. You don't know why things evolve, and you can't think of something that doesn't require motive, so you imply a god to do it. Maybe not an anthropomorphic one, but a universal intelligence nonethelesss. Life doesn't perish because those organisms that have a genetic drive to survive are the ones that reproduce.

You add motive because you want everything to have meaning. You haven't ever been educated on what is really going on, so you think you can just state motive and that is as good as anything else.

I have to say, you are getting on my nerves now.

You've moved into the lands of creationist crackpot, and it is sad because you at least seem to want to understand the world.

Life always changes and adapts and flourishes when there is no competition. That's about all life always does. If you have 10 strains of "life" and 9 of them have 2 offspring per generation and the 10th has 3 offspring, then in a few hundred generations most of the offspring will be from that 10th strain. There isn't inherent meaning, it is just the mathematics of the situation.

...but neither have accident and coincidence... which seem much more far-fetched than what I (and you) tend to believe.

Mutation, natural selection, random genetic drift, migration and recombination have been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt. When you say accident and coincidence, you show a vast ignorance of evolutionary theory. You are ignoring a hundred years of amazing biological research, and falling back on Paley's watchmaker. Not everyone has to know about it, but if you really want to understand the life on earth and its history, go read some evolutionary biology text books.

Permalink Reply by Polymath on September 11, 2009 at 8:49am

I was once asked what the purpose of the universe is. My best answer is "to exist".

Permalink Reply by Rosemary LYNDALL WEMM on September 9, 2009 at 6:32pm

"What if it is just "intelligence/consciousness" - not infallible; not benevolent; not a single personality responsible for everything and having an agenda... but an aggregate of all of the "intelligence" in the universe which has ever been or ever will be."

I think the sciences of neurology and neuropsychology have pretty much ruled out the possibility of an "intelligence" existing in the absence of biological matter.

Permalink Reply by Heidi Guedel on September 9, 2009 at 11:13pm

Scientists of the material reductionist camp would like to have ruled out any possibility of consciousness existing apart from biological matter, but some impressive minds have disagreed with that idea for over 100 years.

From: http://www.amazon.com/Irreducible-Mind-hard-find-contemporary/dp/07...

"Irreducible Mind" by Kelly and Kelly et al

Editorial Reviews
Review
A brilliant, heroic and astonishing revival of late 19th century ideas about cosmic consciousness, individual mental powers and the spiritual or soulful nature of human beings. -- Richard A. Shweder, William Claude Reavis Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago

This book is required--and fascinating!--reading. -- Charles T. Tart, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the Davis campus of the University of California and Professor at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology

This is an extraordinary book. In the arena of neuroscience of mind, it is the most exciting reading to have crossed my path in years. -- David Presti, Professor of Neurobiology, University of California-Berkeley

Product Description
Current mainstream opinion in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind holds that all aspects of human mind and consciousness are generated by physical processes occurring in brains. Views of this sort have dominated recent scholarly publication. The present volume, however, demonstrates--empirically--that this reductive materialism is not only incomplete but false. The authors systematically marshal evidence for a variety of psychological phenomena that are extremely difficult, and in some cases clearly impossible, to account for in conventional physicalist terms. Topics addressed include phenomena of extreme psychophysical influence, memory, psychological automatisms and secondary personality, near-death experiences and allied phenomena, genius-level creativity, and 'mystical' states of consciousness both spontaneous and drug-induced. The authors further show that these rogue phenomena are more readily accommodated by an alternative 'transmission' or 'filter' theory of mind/brain relations advanced over a century ago by a largely forgotten genius, F. W. H. Myers, and developed further by his friend and colleague William James. This theory, moreover, ratifies the commonsense conception of human beings as causally effective conscious agents, and is fully compatible with leading-edge physics and neuroscience. The book should command the attention of all open-minded persons concerned with the still-unsolved mysteries of the mind.
.....................................................

I found this book both fascinating and convincing, and have posted some readings on youtube:

Permalink Reply by OutlawGirl on September 10, 2009 at 2:02am

"Current mainstream opinion in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind holds that all aspects of human mind and consciousness are generated by physical processes occurring in brains. [...] The present volume, however, demonstrates--empirically--that this reductive materialism is not only incomplete but false. [...] Topics addressed include phenomena of extreme psychophysical influence, memory, psychological automatisms and secondary personality, near-death experiences and allied phenomena, genius-level creativity, and 'mystical' states of consciousness both spontaneous and drug-induced."

Trimmed for conciseness.

I notice that all of the phenomena listed here only occur in living organisms with functioning (sometimes impared) brains. By the way, we know what causes near death experiances. It's just what happens to the brain when it's deprived of oxygen. My point is, how does this study say anything about conciousness seperate from "processes occurring in brains" when all of these studies specificly refer to "processes occurring in brains"?

By the way these are not "physical" processes. They are chemical.

Permalink Reply by Rosemary LYNDALL WEMM on September 10, 2009 at 8:35am

Outlaw, you said it before I could. :-) These phenomena have good neuropsychological explanations based on valid evidence.

Such books are useful to read as a comparison between real psychological science and speculative philosophy. Psychology has its nut cases along with every other profession.

Permalink Reply by The Secular One on September 10, 2009 at 2:44am

Can't watch the video right now, but on this point:

all aspects of human mind and consciousness are generated by physical processes occurring in brains.

You know what? It's true!

Permalink Reply by Rosemary LYNDALL WEMM on September 10, 2009 at 8:40am

O.K. Point taken. I'd forgotten about mechanical brains developed by biological ones.

Spectulatively, if they become "alive" does that make us gods? If they become "evil" will we have to go through a facsimile of the Yahweh interventions, including mass murdering them, inventing an android and sacrificing it to save the others from eternal scrap heap damnation?

O.K. O.K. I'm wandering ........... The point being that the whole sin and salvation story looks crazy in this context.

Permalink Reply by The Secular One on September 9, 2009 at 6:50pm

What if dark matter is cotton candy and lollipops? Don't make up some pointless concept of what you'd like dark matter to be, scientists are working it out and it will either be defined or scrapped as a concept in due time.

but an aggregate of all of the "intelligence" in the universe which has ever been or ever will be. Timeless, ubiquitous; omniscient; ever changing (evolving)...

You can't be timeless, omniscient and an aggregate of all intelligence that has or will ever exist and also be ever changing, for how do things changes outside of time? More to the point, why would anyone ever assert that intelligence aggregates outside of time when it can't even exist without a physical mind?

You are talking whoo.

Permalink Reply by JayBarti on September 14, 2009 at 1:55pm

Science has seemingly invented an ineffable substance called "dark matter" to allow for influences on matter and energy in the universe.

When you hear the term "Dark" in cosmology, it doesn't mean what I believe you think it means. I believe the term "Dark" when used with matter and energy in reference to cosmology, signifies that there are portions of our universe that we cannot directly observe (...yet) but that there are indirect observations for. That is to say we can see that "some stuff" is reacting to "some other stuff" that we cannot see, but which we know should be there, that is what the "Dark" stands for. There is no practical evidence that there is any sort of mass mind intelligence or consciousness in those spaces. Dark Matter wasn't invented just because they needed something to stick in there, it instead represents a state of unknown, not unknowable.

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